


if i came here to drown

by princegrantaire



Category: DCU (Comics), Doctor Fate (Comics), Justice Society of America (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Friendships, Does anyone remember Jared Stevens/Fate?, First Meetings, Gen, The Book of Fate (1997)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29027586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princegrantaire/pseuds/princegrantaire
Summary: “Mind if I sit here?”It’s not, in a manner of speaking, one of the old-timers. Jared squints up at brown work boots and some sort of skintight little green abomination of a costume sporting a couple of empty holsters and beyond, at the cut of a strong jawline and a shock of blonde hair mussed by the wind. There’s a quirk of the lips that passes for a smile somewhere in there and the question isn't unkind.Sandman, Jared thinks, finds that he’s misplaced the kid’s name.(Jared Stevens comes back from the dead. The world's grown complicated in his absence.)
Relationships: Jared Stevens & Sanderson Hawkins
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	if i came here to drown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [slaapkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slaapkat/gifts).



> SO. IT IS POSSIBLE THAT ME AND KATIE @SLAAPKAT (LOVE U) ACCIDENTALLY GOT OBSESSED WITH JUST HOW MUCH SANDY HAWKINS OF JSA FAME AND JARED STEVENS/FATE HAVE IN COMMON AND THIS WAS BORN OUT OF THAT. ANYONE REMEMBER THESE CHARACTERS? NO? UNFORTUNATE.
> 
> house rules: this goes with keith giffen's take on jared stevens in the book of fate (1997) but takes some of its cues about his friendship with arnold brunsteel from fate (1994) and scare tactics (1996). he's bi and sandy is gay and if you feel any sorta Tension here then it is fully intentional as this might very well come to be an ongoing series since we've got a whole bunch of concepts!
> 
> jared's timeline is kept intact with his death in jsa 1999 but sandy's is moved up a couple years to make the ages match up -- more on that in future fics.
> 
> ENJOY!

If the brownstone had ever towered over Morningside Heights, it had been summarily dwarfed by the sprawling city in the ensuing decades. There’s not much of a view beyond the empty street -- temperately residential -- and headlights in the night and the occasional darkened splotches of what might be passersby. Hard to distinguish at a distance, this measure of life passes mostly undetected. Jared, connoisseur of boarded-up windows, likes it as much as he likes living in fancy-shmancy Manhattan.

_I like it fine, it just ain’t fer me_ , he’d told Ted Grant that first morning down in the kitchen, hungover from a dose of afterlife that’d stayed clinging too long.

Tending towards something not unlike the familiarity of a sensory meltdown, it’s led Jared to preferring the quiet in recent weeks. Hence: the rooftop, the late hour, the pack of cigarettes smoked halfway through.

He misses Boston, is the thing. He misses belonging or the illusion of it -- rats in the walls, a taped-together armchair for a bed, Arnold’s parties and even the dreaded Nine Inch Nails Cindy from upstairs. The places where it seemed likely to find one Jared Stevens, petty thief and high-school-slash-college dropout, where he hadn’t had to watch his step around spandex feebs whose pocket money amounted to more cash than he’d ever seen or reconcile a current reality with the twenty years he’s unwillingly skipped.

At the sudden thud of the fire door, Jared jumps, almost bites down on the cigarette balancing carefully in his mouth. He doesn’t turn though, lets whoever’s made it up here do what they will with the lacklustre sights.

The brownstone’s residents are yet to be encountered in full. Jared’s never ran into anyone during these solitary hours of smoking in the dark but that doesn’t mean no one’s had the same idea. It had been coincidence, luck. Fate’s never been conductive to questioning these things, he settles for mourning the private loss of a hideaway and wonders whether he should’ve stuck around for that tour nearly a month ago.

It’d unnerved him then, it does now, too.

The immensity of the place had gotten resolutely filed away at first sight and Jared never spares any thoughts for the suite he’s been handed, makes it easy for himself and thinks of the brownstone as the museum it really is -- a tomb of a golden age he’s never much cared for. It’s Jay Garrick’s suffocating midwestern politeness he keeps coming back to, the way he’d eyed the earrings and rings and had fought hard not to say a thing, smile tight and held firmly as he’d shown Jared around. The world rarely agrees with him, heroes older than time least of all. He’d cut the tour short then, mad with the lack of options, choking on quiet disapproval and wishing for Sentinel’s direct brand of distaste, fire and all.

“Mind if I sit here?”

It’s not, in a manner of speaking, one of the old-timers. Jared squints up at brown work boots and some sort of skintight little green abomination of a costume sporting a couple of empty holsters and beyond, at the cut of a strong jawline and a shock of blonde hair mussed by the wind. There’s a quirk of the lips that passes for a smile somewhere in there and the question isn't unkind. _Sandman_ , Jared thinks, finds that he’s misplaced the kid’s name.

“Be my guest, Sandy,” he mumbles, knows he must’ve gotten that much right, at least, when the kid circles around and settles on his left, like maybe he thinks Jared can’t see so good out of his right eye. It’s not an unreasonable assumption to make, there’s times the ankh-vision goes all blurry, out of step with the powers he’s still exploring or, otherwise, addled by death. Today’s not one of those days.

Up-close, and there’s something to be said about incompatible notions of personal space, Sandman can’t be much younger than Jared -- a year or two, at the most -- but he’s not been worn out by the world despite the dark circles under his eyes and there are soft edges still, an earnestness that’s never graced Jared’s presence. It doesn’t help that the kid’s beaming up at him, sat there on the rooftop with his knees drawn to his chest, doe-eyed and looking like he’s hoping the cold ought to account for this abrupt proximity.

“You remembered,” he breathes out through that faint smile.

It takes Jared a moment.

Or two.

“What the fuck, your name’s actually Sandy?” And Jared hates the inexplicable pinprick of guilt at the way the kid’s face falls. It’s easily the first time Jared’s caught him without the mask and the openness of it startles.

To his credit, the kid recovers quickly and holds out a hand for Jared to shake with no hesitation at all. “It’s Sanderson,” he clarifies and adds, quickly and clearly out of habit, ”but everyone calls me Sandy. Sandy Hawkins.” The hand stays in place but Jared does not reach out for it, cracks a smile at the slow retreat. He’s not one for formalities and this whole charade must be for show -- some belated desire to welcome the newcomer and forget about him within the next hour.

“Wait.” Jared makes a face, a memory pokes and prods at him, stirring sleepily in the confines of a mind that had readily cast it aside. “The Golden Boy?!”

The kid, Sandy, laughs like he’s been shocked into it, a quickfire burst of amusement momentarily covered up by the back of a hand. “Wow,” he says, blue eyes crinkled with laughter, “no one’s called me that in-- Yeah. Yeah, that’s me.”

It’s not like Jared to remember but the exhibit down in the museum had stuck with him -- a footnote in the history of the JSA, little more than a couple newspaper cutouts next to a red-and-yellow suit likely to fit only the scrawniest of young teens. _Kid’s messed up for sure_ , he’d told Arnold, elbowing him as they’d looked over the few sentences Sandy the Golden Boy had been afforded. He’d vanished some time in ‘48, a retrospective on the Justice Society of America had claimed, and Jared had thought on it long and hard for no reason he’d been able to parse that night, leaning against Arnold in the bed they’d taken to sharing when the wound had still been too fresh to be talked about.

He’d wondered, then, what had become of this kid and hadn’t considered his own absence in the annals of the mantle of Fate, how he hadn’t found himself unworthy of the title but the universe had and it, too, had acted accordingly in turn. No, what Jared had lingered on without quite knowing why, pressing himself close to Arnold in the dark, had been his own occasional disappearances -- out in the world on his own at sixteen, dead at twenty-eight -- and the very same lack of impact. Worse than a footnote, really. The horror of being left behind.

And here is the Golden Boy himself, not the teenage runaway Jared had pictured nor the old man he should rightfully be. There’s a lot of that going around. Sandy looks like he’s made it out even so, better off than the museum display would let you believe. All at once, he seems brighter than the sun.

“You’re Jared, right? Used to be Doctor Fate?” Sandy prompts, though he sounds like he’s got his answer already.

“Just Fate, they weren’t handin’ out doctorates that day,” Jared says, taking a slow drag of his cigarette when he doesn’t know what to do with the way Sandy laughs again, easy and warm. _It’s time to face the music, Stevens_ , he thinks. The kid’s clearly gone out of his way to be here and there’s no telling why. “I ain’t takin’ your spot, am I?” It’s one theory, that’s for sure.

“No, no, not at all! I just thought you looked like you needed the company. I mean, I _do_ come up here to think sometimes but it’s not like-- the place’s big enough for two.” And perhaps sensing that he’s rambling, Sandy switches gears. “Did your, um, friend leave?”

The kid says _friend_ like he expects to be corrected, all soft about it -- meant to signal, one might think, that he’s not about to call the cops or whatever-the-hell they did back in the day with a fairy as obvious about it as Jared. He snorts, shaking his head, and looks Sandy over, tries to gauge just what’s likely to upset the Golden Boy’s 1940s sensibilities. Truth be told, and that’s a rare treat, Sandy looks eager to please and not in the least contrite about it, reaching out for whatever Jared’s willing to give. A foreign sentiment, approachable only with caution.

“Arn went to see his sister in Boston, he’ll be back though. It sorta took us a while to figure out how to break the news an’ all that, turns out there ain’t no greetings cards for comin’ back from the dead.” Jared is urgently glad for the cigarette in his hand, the grounding routine of it. He’s never spoken the words before and the reality frightens in spite of itself. “He’s got a whole lotta pieces of his life to pick up and see what’s what. More than me, anyways.”

If he’s said too much, Sandy’s nice enough to let it go. There’s no pity in his eyes, though there’s a thinner line than most to tread between the trappings of _that_ and sympathy. Jared’s not in the business of accepting either.

Jared is also, as it happens, stone-cold sober and his woozy familiarity with the car-crash fascination of pushing on past the unspeakable and weeping on someone’s shoulder by the end of the night provides no explanation for this outburst. Maybe it’s some messed up separation anxiety, leftover terror from the last time they’d ventured out apart and gotten themselves killed within a couple weeks of each other. Another item on the endless list of bullshit Jared has to put up with now -- issues he’d never given a second thought before he’d been unceremoniously stabbed with his own knife had risen to the surface some time in the past month, choking him in the early hours of the morning, aching acutely when Arnold had left.

It explains the spillage, though it doesn’t make Jared regret it any less. Sandy’s only a rank above a stranger and neither has even had the decency to grab the six-pack he’d spotted in the fridge earlier to ease the sting.

“I know what that’s like,” Sandy says instead of anything Jared had expected or would’ve gone for himself -- namely, timeless classics like _What the hell?_ and _I think you’ve lost it, pal_.

Jared takes the time to blink owlishly at the kid, uncomprehending.

“I know what that’s like,” Sandy repeats, horribly earnest, “I woke up eleven years ago and I was fifteen and, uh, last I remembered the war had only just ended. I know it’s not the same as dying but I’ve been through the whole… the world’s moved on without you-- thing. My folks were dead, I barely knew anyone.” It’s then Sandy clears his throat, like he’s embarrassed or suffering the same realisation Jared had. “I’m not trying to make this about myself, I just… want you to know I’m here.”

_Jesus Christ_.

“Jesus Christ,” Jared says. At a loss for words, he hands Sandy a cigarette and only understands what he’s doing as the kid’s shaking his head, that soft smile of his back in action.

“I don’t-- um, Wes wouldn’t have liked it. Thank you though.”

Admittedly, it’s hard to tell just now who Wes is or was but Jared takes the refusal in stride and shrugs a shoulder. “Guess this is my official welcome to the ‘man outta time’ club, huh?” he asks and looks out at what little there is to be seen of the city.

“Something like that,” Sandy agrees, unflinchingly pleasant.

It’s a nice night and Jared feels an uncharacteristic willingness to let it proceed unaided by any gripe about the cards he’s been dealt. In the morning, Arnold’s likely call and the knot in his stomach will fade and Jared will find that there’s a certain charm to a new dawn. Sandy Hawkins had sought him out and he’s good enough company to stick around for. If the universe had once turned its back on the Golden Boy, Jared wouldn’t do the same. After all, the favour’s already been repaid in full.

**Author's Note:**

> title from "wizard buys a hat" by the mountain goats.
> 
> FIND ME ON TUMBLR @UFONAUT!


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